fiction & poetry & musings from a curious girl

Category: Fiction

Right now, I’m between degrees and only working in the archives part time, which means that I have more time for myself than I’ve had in years. The biggest trademark of my English degree was the way it structured my reading and not always in great ways (hello, Chaucer) but now I have full freedom to choose what I want to read and when. This is the perfect opportunity to work through my unruly TBR pile that has been steadily growing for years. Since at any given moment I’m either reading a book, looking for books or talking about books (sorry), I want to document them all in one place and keep myself accountable to keep going. I’ll be posting reviews and musings about the books I read, and I’ll also be using the public library as much as possible to save both my bank account and my poor overworked bookshelves. Please send me all of your book recommendations too! I’d love to know what you’re reading.

What I’ve read so far this summer (fun fact: 9 start with the prefix the)

The Taxidermist’s Daughter – Kate Mosse

Little Sister – Barbara Gowdy

Restlessness – Aritha van Herk

I’m the King of the Castle – Susan Hill

Never Let Me Go – Kazuo Ishiguro

The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood

The Haunting of Hill House – Shirley Jackson

The Romantic – Barbara Gowdy

The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro

The World According to Garp – John Irving

The Bear – Clare Cameron

The Girls – Emma Cline

Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? – Jeanette Winterson

The Catcher in the Rye – J.D. Salinger

Even this page is white – Vivek Shraya

Fiction I need to read (fun fact: only 11 begin with the but 3 are about birds!)

The woman who gave birth to rabbits – Emma Donoghue

The Afterlife of Birds – Elizabeth Philips

The Genius of Birds – Elizabeth Philips.

The End of the Story -Lydia Davis

In Cold Blood – Truman Capote

Villette – Charlotte Brontë

Beloved – Toni Morrison

Ulysses – James Joyce

Astray – Emma Donoghue

The Back of the Turtle -Thomas King

The Waves – Virginia Woolf

The Studhorse man – Robert Kroetsch

White Teeth – Zadie Smith

Swing Time – Zadie Smith

Ophelia’s Muse – Rita Cameron

Agnes Gray – Anne Brontë

The obituary Writer – Ann Hood

Moonglow – Michael Chabon

Angela’s ashes – Frank McCourt

The Break – Katherena Vermette

The way the crow flies – Ann-Marie McDonald

Son of a Trickster – Eden Robinson

Moshi Moshi – Banana Yoshimoto

Yesterday, at the Hotel Clarendon – Nicole Brossard

Ana, Historic – Daphne Marlatt

Wise Blood – Flannery O’Connor

The Falls – Joyce Carol Oates

Poetry I need to read:

Nets – Jen Bervin

Recyclopedia – Haryette Mullen

Joy Kagawa – A Garden of Anchors

Non-fiction/biography I need to read:

Shirley Jackson, A Rather Haunted Life – Ruth Franklin

Virginia Woolf, A Biography – Hermione Lee

Charlotte Brontë – Clare Harman

Anais Nin, A Biography – Deirdre Bair

Bad Feminist – Roxanne Gay

How to Build a Woman – Caitlin Moran

This list is probably about one hundredth of the books I want to read, but it’s a good start! Please send me book recommendations (especially for new poetry). I’m always up for something new!

I’m thrilled to have been selected as the 2nd place winner in the 2016 Blodwyn Memorial Prize. The folks at WordsonPages worked so hard to make this prize come together and always manage to put together a beautiful issue of (Parenthetical).